Holistic Technology Enabled Internet Marketing Solutions

We know… it happens. Facebook is confusing. You probably set it up in a a hurry. Then you started using it, you got some friends and some traction and realized your Facebook page is actually set up as a personal/profile/timeline and not as a business page, like it is supposed to be.

You don’t want to discredit the followers you have gotten and you don’t want to have to say all that time you put into it was a waste… so what is a busy marketer or business to do?

Now you can convert your personal profile into a business profile. All your ‘friends’ will carry over to it you but they will turn into ‘likes’. For more information about converting your profile, read these FAQs from Facebook.

The only other thing that will transfer along with your friends will be your Profile Pictures album.

You can (and should) backup your information so you have it and can repopulate your page after it has been transferred. Below is info from Facebook on backing up your timeline information.

To avoid losing important content, we recommend taking these steps before you convert your profile (timeline):

1. Download your profile (timeline) information. You can download a file that contains all of your sent and received messages and all of the photos and videos you’ve uploaded to Facebook.
2. Appoint a new group admin or a new Facebook Page admin to any groups or pages that you manage. The account you’re converting will lose these admin rights during the conversion process.

To actually convert your personal page to a business page you need to go here.

Facebook takes you through some very simple steps to make the change. Follow along and when you are done, your personal page will flip to a business page.

Some things I have seen and heard that may freak you out:

• Your Friends who convert to Likes will not show up instantly. I have flipped a few pages and it took a matter of minutes but I have heard of it taking longer… even days.
• You no longer have a personal page. I know that is what you just got rid of but it freaks people out. You will need to create a new personal page.
• The ‘Use Facebook as Page’ link goes missing. That is because, as stated above, you no longer have a personal page. You currently have only the business page.
• Your search bar goes away… it comes back though.

Some things I would do before converting my profile

• If you are the admin of any other pages, make someone else an admin, your profile is going to go away… so then you won’t be able to be an admin. You can set up a new profile and add your new and improved personal profile as an admin.
• Have a stiff drink, a cup of herbal tea, a stress ball or a yoga mat nearby. There is definitely a ‘push a button and hope’ feeling that freaks me out when you do this but if you backed up your information, you should have less to worry about.

I know a change like this is stressful but if your page is set up incorrectly you will want to do it. If you carry on with your personal page as your company page, you will never be able to reach more than 5,000 ‘friends’ plus there is different functionality to a business page over a personal page.

Good luck and I hope that helps! Have any of you flipped your page? Do you have anything you want to add to these notes? Any changes that really freaked you out?

Another year is ending which means a new one is beginning. I thought it would be fun to take a look back in our Analytics and see what topics that we wrote about that you seemed to find the most interesting. It is always fun looking back at a year with some data behind it.

Below is our list of the 10 most popular blogs of 2011. See if you think it all lines up right with how the year went in the internet marketing world and take a look back on a few you may have missed!

10. How and Why to Create Google Alerts

Google Alerts are a great way to keep an ear to the pavement on your brand, your industry or even your own name. In this post, Jenika tells us why they are important and how to set them up.

9. Find What Facebook Pages Like Your Facebook Business Page

This year Facebook added the functionality to participate on Facebook as your brand or business. In this post I talked about finding what businesses and pages like your company page on Facebook.

8. Referring Sites, Search Engines, Direct Traffic – How Do You Get More?

Using Google Analytics you can see how people are getting to your website (referral, direct or search). All three are important pieces of your web marketing pie. In this post I talked about what each referral is about and how to get more of each.

7. 5 Reasons the New Facebook Pages are a Big Deal for Businesses

As previously mentioned, early this year Facebook made major changes to Facebook Business Pages. This post recaps what those changes were and how the were a blessing for many of us maintaining company pages.

6. Stock Image BINGO

One of my personal favorites of the year. Headed to a conference? Take stock (oooh I had to do it) of our Stock Image BINGO sheet and see how many familiar faces, places and icons you see!

5. Learn Something New – View Site Traffic by Hour

One of the best parts about our job is that we are constantly learning (the internet waits for no one). Jenika learned that in the new Google Analytics interface you can view your site traffic by the hour

4. What’s the deal with Groupon and other sites like it?

This year was definitley the rise of the coupon sites. Whether you buy into it or not, they were tough to miss. In this post Jenika helped learn more about what they are and what they could mean for your business.

3. What is Siri? What Does it Mean for How We Search?

Alas, no iPhone 5 this year. Instead we were teased with the iPhone 4S. Other than a better camera, the biggest addition to the new iPhone was Siri a magical personal assistant that talks to you and can perform simple tasks. In this post we talked about what Siri is and how I think it will effect searches in the future.

2. What is the Best Time of Day to Tweet?

This is a popular questions that I get a lot so I took a few minutes to talk about it.

1. What is a QR Code?

This post was actually from 2010! We are sooooo hip! QR codes popped up all over the place this year. In this post I explained what a QR code is. We also got to talk about them with Mainebiz this Fall too.

Happy New Year!
Cheers to a fantastic 2012

Photo credit: nigelhowe

One of the easiest ways to improve your content marketing/social media marketing is to share the load. Instead of being responsible for everything yourself you could share posting, tweeting and writing with other people. Not only will this help you out but it will add different voices to your messaging, which is great for your readers.

You could bring in other staff members to help you create content. You could also take a page from Guiding Stars and use your community to write for you.

If you are going to hand over the keys and use WordPress for your blog, you should set up a User for anyone that will be logging into your blog. As you set them up, you need to choose which Role they will have. This is a very important step and will determine how they can interact with the Admin section of your blog.

Here is a breakdown of the different kinds of Users and what the capability of each level is:

• Subscriber – A Subscriber to your blog does just that – they subscribe to get your content. They are able to manage their profile but they cannot post content to your blog or read draft posts. The largest benefit of being a Subscriber is if you want to leave a comment on the blog, you won’t have to add your information to the form each time.
• Contributor – A blog Contributor can log in and create a post. They cannot publish their post. Someone with a higher WordPress Clearance level has to come in, review the post and can then publish it. This is great for handing over some content to staff or your community but you want to review each piece before it goes live.
• Author – An Author is able to log in, create posts and they can publish them. An Author cannot approve a post written by anyone other than themselves.
• Editor – An Editor can log in, write and publish their own posts. They can also access other people’s posts and drafts. They also have the ability to publish anyone’s posts.
• Administrator – An Administrator has access to everything on the site, including the HTML, CSS and all plugins of the blog. They can add and edit anyone’s posts and they can edit the look and feel of your blog.

So if you are looking to lighten your load for 2012 and want some help coming up with blog entries, try using WordPress User levels to get other voices to your blog but still be in control of what is posted and by whom.

This is an entry in our daily Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series. Each day your favorite marketing elves will focus on a new topic to get your internet marketing in order before the start of the new year.

Ahh… Here it finally is! My favorite day of the entire year; Christmas Eve Day! It’s full of so much excitement and anticipation! This year I tried to stretch it out as long as possible. I think I started listening to Christmas music the first week of November! It seems Google got in the spirit this year too. Has anyone noticed any of the fun effects they have added to their search results over the past month?

• By far one of the most fun toys I’ve played with this season; brought to us by Gmail, you can send a call/video from Santa! I highly recommend checking this out!
• Type “let it snow” in Google’s search engine, watch the snow fall, and then scrape the snow using your mouse (only works in some browsers).
• I absolutely love Christmas lights and, apparently, so does Google; check out their holiday doodle. You click on it and it lights up and then plays a song!
• Try using Google’s search engine and type in words including “Christmas” and “Santa.” Google’s results page becomes decorated with a string of holiday lights.
• YouTube even got in the spirit by adding a snowflake button to some of the videos so, when you click it, it starts to snow inside the videos!

It’s been fun to see how Google has gotten into the spirit. It seems like it was contagious too; people searching for the words “let it snow” increased more this month than it ever has! It’s nice to see that Google is helping spread Christmas cheer! Now I’m off to do the same thing!

I hope you all have a wonderful and safe holiday season!

Read more from our Internet Marketing Advent Calendar series!